Nurturing Creativity and Marketing Mindsets for Authors with Guest Jen Graybeal

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Smith Publicity All Things Book Marketing podcast,
offering tips, insights, and advice from the best in the
publishing industry.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello and welcome to the All Things Book Marketing Podcast.
I'm Carin Mulder, vice president of business Development and excited
to step in today as the host. Today, we are
joined by creative coach and book marketing expert Jennifer Graybial
Jen great Beale. Jen gray Beial is dedicated to empowering

(00:35):
authors through encouraging feedback, collaborative problem solving, and gently applied
tough love. Ten years of coaching, workshops and editing projects,
she has helped over a thousand authors create stories they
are proud of and businesses that align with our individual
vision of success. Jen is a certified creativity coach with

(00:55):
a degree in English, an ever expanding to be read pile,
and a verbal assistant that is usually on her lap.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
I wonder if they're there today.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Visit her website for client testimonials at Jengraybield dot com
or follow her on Instagram, Reds, Blue Sky, and TikTok
at Jen the Editor. Jen, thank you for being here today.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Karen, I'm so
happy to chat with you.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
And I have to say it was a very serendipitous
meeting that we had, not you and I personally. We
had a couple of colleagues from Smith attending the NINK
conference this year in Florida. Just time going down where
I know you got to meet a couple of my colleagues.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
But how was the show for you?

Speaker 4 (01:40):
Oh gosh, NINK was so much fun. First of all,
it takes place right on the beach. You're right there
on the sand, which is always puts me in a
great mood. And quick shout out to the folks at
trade Wind's Resort in because the week after that we
were there was when uh, the hurricane came through. They

(02:03):
are taking good care of themselves and putting the hotel
back together, so it looks like it's going to be
great for next year already. So so uh, they have
been in my in my thoughts a lot. But the
NIK conference is one that it's such a great conference
to go to because it's all authors that are very

(02:25):
professionally minded. You have to you have to qualify with
income in order to be a member of NINCK, and
then once you're there, everyone is operating at such a
high level that it really challenges everything that you that
you come in thinking about and seeing that there are
so many different ways to run an author business, so
many people doing so many different kinds of things, and

(02:47):
and really seeking out the way to be the most
effective and profitable version of themselves.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, and I should clarify too that NINK is Novelists, Inc.
So that's really based for the fiction author, which I know, Jen,
you live in that world quite deeply. I did tell
you when we first connected a few weeks ago that
I had serious FOMO because after NINK you were heading
to Author Nation, and because you're the first contact I've

(03:17):
talked to who's been there and this was the inaugural event.
I'd love to hear, even just between NINK and Author Nation,
some of the takeaways that you're seeing bubble up in
this fourth quarter that you think might be setting some
trends and cadence for what we can expect in the
book marketing world related to nonfiction or fiction for twenty

(03:39):
twenty five.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
Yeah. I thought the Author Nation team did a fantastic job.
It was their first go around for putting on a conference,
and they are sort of coming off the coattails of
twenty books to fifty K, which a lot of people
really loved going to that conference as well, and I
was very impressed with how how great the networking opportunities were,

(04:04):
the number of sessions that were available. That was the
hardest part probably is that there's five six different sessions
all going on at once, and I want to go
to you know, four out of the six every single time.
So they are recorded, which is great, and there's a
digital option for folks that that don't want to go
out to Vegas. But but the team just really put

(04:26):
a lot of care and a lot of thought into
trying to hit not only the folks that are you know,
some some craft messages, but as some business conversations and
also some things to just really challenge you, what is
a different way to think about how you go about
your business? What is something you know, what is a
new tool or a new process that you might be

(04:47):
able to use that expands your business and and really
can build your following. So that was a really great thing,
and I think in terms of trends that we might
be seeing, it's real about being able to take advantage
of some of those new possibilities that are out there
anything from you know, we've seen Amazon has recently announced

(05:11):
that they are going to that they're going to stop
with the Villa program, and there are a lot of
authors that had done that had done well on Villa,
that had garnered a following, and so that conversation about well,
what do you do now with your serial and where
can that go? Having those kinds of conversations, being able
to think about if you have a book that is

(05:31):
a novel that has already been published right and is
within your control. If it's a traditionally published book, you
may not have this option, But for self published authors,
you have a lot of options in terms of how
you can leverage things like serialization, how you can leverage
things like YouTube, how you can leverage things like even
podcasting to be able to market your book and be

(05:52):
able to get people interested in the story that you're telling,
interested in those characters, and interested in you as a
as a writer, and being able to pull people into
using all these different avenues to be able to pull
people into your world and into your universe is really
incredibly exciting.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Oh I love that.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
I love that, And you've said it a couple of times,
you know, you're building a business, right, You're not just
launching a book. And I will say I think that
is a wonderful thing to hear for whatever genre you're
publishing in on fiction or fiction and Jen, I know
that you primarily do work in the space of fiction,
and you're mentioning some of the things there with serialization,

(06:34):
with the storytelling. It's not just any fiction author, but
the romance author really does have a knack for, you know,
keeping ahead of what their next move is, continuing to
populate and expand you know, the rhetoric within their own network,
and keeping people buzzing about their work. So when you

(06:54):
take what you see as trending and these tactics and
strategies that are starting to bubble up, what can we
learn from the romance author, again, be in any genre,
what can we learn from them? Because they certainly are
an anomaly in this industry. I feel, oh, they really are.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
The romance genre authors tend to be a few years
ahead of everybody else. Romance as a genre is a
multi billion dollar entity on its own and consistently creates
generates more income. Somewhere in the neighborhood of like triple

(07:33):
what the next level genre makes and what that does
is it really pushes romance authors to be innovative and
be able to meet their readers where they are. Because
the other thing about romance readers, it's not just that
there's a lot of books that are out there. It's
that romance readers are voracious. A romance reader will often

(07:55):
be someone who is reading upwards of five books a week,
and and so there's a voraciousness to it where we
don't see that in the other genres. And for non
romance readers, it's very common for someone to read a reader,
someone who identifies as a reader that will read twelve
books a year. So that's and the other thing that's

(08:15):
a great about romance readers is that it's not just
about a lot of times when people think romance, they
think of like contemporary romance, they think of you know,
what they see in a rom common movie, those kinds
of things. But the romance genre is so broad. It
covers there's fantasy, there's there's sci fi. There's historicals, historicals

(08:37):
from multiple time periods. There's there's some dark romance with
some very scary and intense themes. There's thrillers, there's mysteries.
So within within the romance community you can get so
many different types of genres, and so we see readers
that will go and read cross not only across the

(08:58):
romance genre, but then it's and that out their readership
into other genres. So it's a really exciting place to be.
For that reason, we see so many options for authors
to be able to go beyond. If you're a contemporary
romance writer, for example, you can much more easily extend
your reach into some of the other genres of that

(09:18):
interest you in the writing side. And then what that
forces a romance author, though, to be is to really
put their business hat front and center when they're writing.
Certainly for a lot of new authors, they should write
whatever whatever lights them up, whatever makes them excited. And
I will always tell an author that the next best

(09:39):
thing for you to write, regardless of how many different
ideas that you have, is whatever makes you most excited
about it, because whatever you're most excited about is going
to come through in the writing. But when we think
about when we think about the business side of what
that looks like, sometimes that comes down to how do
you market a book that maybe is outside of the
hot trend right now, and you know that's always going

(10:02):
to happen. That everything is kind of cyclical. There's things
that are we saw with Bridgerton kind of a rise
in some historical interest. But and then we see, you know,
vampires coming in and out of fashion every so often.
But as they say, vampires never die. So even if
you are somebody who's writing vampires now that are less popular,

(10:24):
that there's definitely going to be an upward trend here
coming pretty soon. The big thing right now we see
in the romantic world is romanticy lots of dragons, lots
of lots of sword fighting, that type of thing. So
so it can be a really exciting place to be.
So there's always something that's that's happening, something that's going on,

(10:44):
and we really love to see that.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
Oh, Jen, I love that.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
And I have to say, can you know again, because
we we work here in fiction and nonfiction and and
you know different areas, and I feel what we always
know to be true when we're working with an author
taking a message out to media is you have to
start with your niche audience, and you have to start
with where the true target reader lives.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
And so to hear just even the breath of the.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Romance genre, you're still encouraging that that, you know, if
it's a romance book, you have to niche down, you
have to find the smaller network of where to start
before you can start expanding out from there. So I
do appreciate that, and I can hear that very very loudly.
So while the romance author might be the anomaly, I

(11:32):
feel like marketing is not something that's easy for many
to do. And with your years of experience as a
creative coach, as an editor, as a marketing coach, why
do you find it's so hard for authors to start
the marketing process and why it's so intimidating.

Speaker 4 (11:53):
You know, there's a couple of things going on here.
The first thing I'll say is that I think because
authors become authors because I love to write, and for
some of them, that means following, you know, finding a
traditional publisher who is going to help them along with
the publishing process. And there's a belief there there because

(12:13):
the practice used to be that the publishing house would
take care of all of the marketing and the author
was able to really just focus on the writing. And
more and more we are seeing that to be not
the case. Publishers have cut budgets pretty significantly. There are
more and more junior marketing folks that are on that

(12:33):
are in place. They're sort of a one size fits all,
you know, approach with some publishers. Some publishers are great
about being much more individualized in their in their marketing,
so I don't want to paint everybody with the same brush,
but pretty much across the board, I'm hearing lots of
less spending and maybe focusing on only a small number

(12:58):
of high level authors and that everybody else is not
getting the same treatment, which means that as an author,
you have to fill in. Now. A self published author
kind of knows that going in, when they have made
the decision that they are going to self publish, they
recognize that everything that's involved in publishing, marketing, and sales
are all going to fall on their shoulders. So the

(13:19):
only difference is that that track pub authors have been
a little more surprised. Self pub authors are less surprised,
But I think once they've kind of realized that they
have to do the marketing, a lot of times what
happens is that they run straight into tactics. I need
a social media account, I need to run ads that
type of thing. And while those things are true, the

(13:40):
marketing we have to remember is a really big, giant
umbrella of expertise. There are people that get master's degrees
in marketing. There as people that get master's degrees specifically
in digital marketing. So there's a ton of knowledge and
information that's out there about this and in terms of

(14:00):
practices and what works and the why behind why certain
things work. And so when we jump straight in right,
a lot of times as authors, uh, they don't necessarily
give themselves the chance to ramp up the learning. You know,
they take a class that is, you know, a couple
of hours and they're like, oh, yeah, you can just
jump in. This is how it was easy for me,

(14:21):
and we forget everything that kind of goes before it
got easy. So when things when you jump in and
things are difficult and it's not working, you get a
lot of it's not working before it actually works. And
the fact of the matter is that's actually how marketing operates.
Even with great big companies. A great big corporation is

(14:42):
going to do a lot of trend research. They're going
to do some market research. They're going to see what
else is happening, and not only in the niche that
they find themselves in, excuse me, but they will do
they will do research and other and other things sort
of the surrounding niches that are in that field. And

(15:03):
then they'll do some test marketing, and then they'll do
some focus groups. And so there's all these things that
happened before we see a commercial on a broad scale,
and we forget that that corporations are going to do
all of that work in order to have that commercial
finally be successful. But as authors and as small business owners,
a lot of people go straight into the I tried ads,

(15:24):
it didn't work. I spent five hundred dollars on ads
and GET did not see sales as a result. And
that is and because it's coming out of pocket, that
is a very difficult hill to climb for a lot
of people. So there are a lot of different ways

(15:45):
to kind of think about marketing, but it always, always
always comes down to the very minute details. It matters
what words you're using on that ad, It matters what
colors you've incorporated into that. It matters how often you
send your news letter, It matters whether you ask questions
in your newsletter or not. These kinds of little tiny

(16:05):
details make a huge impact on how effective your marketing is.
And that's a word I don't hear enough people talking about.
Is what it means to have an effective marketing tactic
that you are pursuing versus I post every day, right,
and what that word really means because once folks realize

(16:27):
that the design process for effective marketing takes time and
most importantly takes experimentation. And the experimentation is where we
often see people get very disheartened because it is a
matter of trial and error every single time. Sorry, I

(16:54):
hope you could cancel that. Well, cut that part out.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Certainly, well, but I did see that in your background
and in your approach to working with clients, that clear
distinction of strategy versus tactics. And I have to say,
you know, I do my spiel of marketing versus publicity,
and I've said it for years, but that caught my
eye because I can see, you know, it being interchangeable,
but it's actually not at all, Right, it's the tactical,

(17:23):
the execution of it, the hands on implementation versus at
higher levels. So in setting the strategy up front and
giving yourself room to try trial and error, you know,
a bunch of these different areas and troubleshoot and work
through the confidence issues because, like you said, it's disheartening

(17:43):
when you have the vision and it might not be
as well received, but it's still opportunity to pivot and
then go back to the strategy and the drawing board
of why the why behind it all. How much time
should an author budget for prior to the launch of
their book in assembling your marketing strategy so that they
have time to trial and error and also just navigate life,

(18:07):
because I know, you know, the mental load of launching
a book is a lot. It's exciting, it's all fun eventually,
but it's a lot of work. So to set yourself
up for success, what do you recommend authors kind of
have in terms of a runway time when they set
their strategy.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
Yeah, so I have seen. Here's the thing about authors.
Every single one of them operate differently, and that's a
really really important thing for folks to keep in mind.
I often say that, you know, when you see an
author doing something and you think, oh, if she can
do it, I can do it. And I want that

(18:48):
to be a phrase that is inspirational for people, right,
But instead a lot of times it becomes it becomes
something that that we feel ashamed by because we can't
do what she does. She makes it look so easy,
and I cannot even get half of the success that

(19:08):
she's seeing. I can't get even one tenth of the
success that she's seeing. Therefore, there's something wrong with me.
And when we turn that, when we turn that phrase
into something that is hurtful and shameful for ourselves, that
no longer helps us. And so we can't look at
somebody else at what they're doing because we don't know
everything else that's gone on around it, behind it, under it,

(19:30):
over it. We don't know what has taken for that
person to see that level of success. We don't know.
I was recently reminded of of Holly Hunter and Broadcast News,
which is a little bit of an older movie. But
she she is strong, and she is confident, and she
knows exactly what she wants and she's a very forceful

(19:52):
person in the newsroom. In the course of this movie,
and then we find out that she schedules five minutes
of sobbing every time, single day, and that she has
to make that time for herself to just completely break
down and lose it. And I think it's important for
us to remember that, even if we're not the type
that schedules that type of that type of briny doubt,

(20:15):
but it's important for us to remember that we don't
know what's going on behind the scenes, because the only
thing that we see is the success. We don't know
what went on behind the scenes first. So when we
think about about runway and timelines and that type of thing,
I think three months is a really nice number for
people to build up interest and get excitement behind the

(20:38):
launch day. However, in order for you to start on
that three month day, you may have to start another
thirty to thirty days or more ahead of time. And again,
this all comes down to what else do you have
going on in your life at the time. If you
are somebody who publishes once a year versus somebody who's
publishing once a month. Are you somebody that has that
has a number of books out or is this your

(20:59):
first one. Are you somebody that has a fully functioning
marketing network that you can leverage, or are you somebody
who's starting from scratch. So these are all side of
pieces that we have to play into how this is
all going to operate and what this is going to
work out. We also have to recognize that there are
folks who are on a very natural sense, are much

(21:22):
better at posting on social media and or doing podcasts
and or running their newsletter, and so wherever you are,
you have to sort of compare yourself to yourself rather
than to other people, and see that whatever happens in
this launch, the goal is to use that as a baseline,
and then the next one, let's see what we can

(21:43):
do better. It's always a learning process and there's always
something different that you can do, so all you can do,
rather than attempting to make every single do everything exactly
perfectly right, do some things with the recognition that this
is all an experiment and there's going to be a
review process to figure out what happened and what worked,

(22:04):
what we want to repeat, and what we don't want
to repeat. And that's kind of where we think about
the difference between the marketing strategy and the tactics, right,
is that the tactics the strategy is sort of that
overarching story that we're trying to tell what are we
trying to get out into the market, how do we
think about these things? And then the tactics are sort

(22:25):
of all the little pieces that go into it. I'm
a Lego fan. I love making, I love building things
with legos, and so the the way I describe this
is that the strategy is the picture that's in your
head of what you want it to turn out, like
a castalyst spaceship of you know, a garden, like whatever
the thing is that's in your head that you want
to that you want to do. The tactics are each

(22:47):
individual brick and it's about putting them together in a
way that conveys your your overall vision. And that's why
it's that's why I feel like it's very difficult for
folks that don't go into marketing with a strategy and
haven't sort of thought through some of those higher level
questions that they should be asking themselves and go straight
into tactics, because if you don't have a vision for

(23:08):
what you want to achieve, it's very difficult to put
the pieces in place to make that happen for yourself.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, oh, Jen, you're so great.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
I mean I feel the Lego analogy is felt on
this side. I actually did just look to see when
the next Lego Master season is.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Coming out.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Unrelated, but I have two boys. That's our fan one
of our family shows. But it is they're going back
in another season. But I do that vision of you know,
and we are in Lego season here at my house,
so we'll get the you know, the full picture on
the front of the box. But then to think of
each little brick really playing its part to make up
that bigger picture is really relate right to marketing.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
You said social media a couple of times in your answers.
I have to say, I, you know, do my research
behind an author call or exploratory call. Social media is
where I like to go as well, to get a
flavor for what they're posting, what the voice is. But
I also know, and I say this, it's the necessary
evil in some ways to a lot of individuals. You know,

(24:14):
authors themselves say they're introverts, and then you're pushing yourself
to be an extrovert. You're pushing yourself to talk about
yourself and the story behind the story, which is all.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Uncomfortable and fun.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Is social media still a major player in the marketing strategy?

Speaker 3 (24:32):
I think I have an answer to that.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
But if authors really feel or they come in with
their heels dug and saying it is not my thing.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Posting is overwhelming.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
How do you take that conversation with a coaching client
when you know it is going to be a critical
part to it all.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
Oh yeah, I think there's a couple different ways to
think about it. So the first thing to think about
is are you using social media to find new readers
or do you use social media in a different way.
And I think that for a long time, social media
was a great way for people to find you, that

(25:12):
you could you could have all this stuff out there
and Instagram would show that to various things, or Twitter
would show a tweet to people that might be interested.
And we aren't seeing that so much anymore. We are
seeing changes to the algorithm, changes to the way that
things are seen. So an Instagram, a very widely seen
Instagram post might appear to twenty percent of your followers

(25:34):
and only a tiny, tiny percentage of that are people
that aren't following you. It was like a suggested post
or something like that. So we have to remember that
that as social media algorithms have changed, we have to
be able to change alongside of it. So for folks
that for folks that enjoy social media and can put
themselves out there and feel very confident in what they post,

(25:56):
whether whether it's because they're posting specifically about their writing
and their or whether they put you know, elements of
their of their life, their real life out there, that
kind of thing that's a personal choice, and if they
feel really confident in it, by all means, go ahead
and do it. For folks that struggle, And the reality
is for folks that are that are are feminine online,

(26:17):
and especially for romance authors, there's a certain group of
either people or bots that feel it is appropriate to
be very inappropriate with you. And for a lot for
some people they can laugh it off and and not
worry about it. They don't, you know, when when bots
come on and say mean things about their appearance or

(26:39):
their house or whatever, they don't care and they can
do and it just roles other people. It hits them
really hard, and it affects their ability to be to
be creative and to be joyful and and not something
that we have to know about ourselves. So I don't
see social media as a as a place that is
required for everyone to be the same. You don't have

(27:02):
to be super out there, and you don't have to
do a lot of that. I have a process that
I recommend to folks who don't enjoy social media because
I do think that there's value in it. And one
of the reasons there's value is that at the end
of the day, there are readers out there that want
to connect with you and want to know what it
is that you're doing. Some of them will subscribe to
your newsletter, but there's a lot of people who, even

(27:24):
if they subscribe to your newsletter, may never see it
because you know, they get one hundred emails a day,
and that's just the reality. If people are not opening
your newsletter for whatever reason, it's going to end up
in the it's going to end up in a different tab,
it's going to end up in spam, like we have
all these problems with email delivery. So social media is
a place that maybe they feel more comfortable, Maybe maybe

(27:48):
that is a place that they that they would prefer
to hear from you on. So we want to be
able to serve those readers as well. So what I
recommend for some folks is instead of thinking about social
media as a place that is doing outreach for you,
that is that is going to find people who've never
heard of you. Instead, think about social media as a

(28:09):
place where you interact with your fans in the same
way that Facebook groups used to be able to provide
that our Facebook page used to be able to provide
that type of interaction. If social media is specifically your fans,
what do your fans want to know? What are your
fans care about? And being able to talk you know
more specifically about the books that you're creating and the
books that you're putting out is probably just enough information

(28:32):
for them. Maybe occasionally pictures of your of your dog
or your your pets, those kinds of things. But if
we think about it as a place that is only
that is fans specific, it's much easier to think of
stuff than that we might want to post. So so
number one I would say is to is to reduce
If you feel like it's not working for you, that's okay.
Reduce the amount of time and energy that you put

(28:54):
into it. There are there are templates that you can
find in Canva. Find some find some Canva templates that
work with the color scheme of your of your book
covers and take a little time and create a list
of pull quotes from your books. Pull quotes meaning it's

(29:14):
a quote that's in your book that you can literally
like pull on youse somewhere else. So if you have
some funny lines, some heartfelt lines, some moments that will
make people giggle, some moments that will make people go aw,
you know those kinds of things, incorporate, you know, just
make a list of them that you can pull and
then and then put them, just pull them straight into

(29:37):
the template and be able to post those, you know,
a couple times a week, and that's probably enough. As
you are thinking about the books that are already published,
if you have a new release that's coming up, you know,
think ahead of time again, thinking about that a three
month ramp up that you might be doing. Think about
things like your covers when you're pre or goes live.

(30:02):
What do people want to know about the main characters
or about the conflict, or about the story or about
the plot, Like what are some elements that you might
want to pull in and just kind of set those up.
And you might be thinking, Jen, there's just really not enough,
Like if I'm going to post three times a week
for three months, like I just I don't have that
much stuff. Well, guess what, you can reuse it. You

(30:23):
can reuse content again. Only on a very popular post,
twenty percent of your followers will see that post. So
you're looking at mostly in the neighborhood of ten percent
of your followers are going to see that. It's okay
to reuse it. It's okay to post it again, reuse the caption,
reuse the same image, and just put it back up.

(30:43):
Because again, people are not on social media every single
day for the most part, some of us are, but
a lot of people they are going to miss it
sometimes that and so giving that another opportunity rather than
feeling like you have to create a brand new thing
every single time. And the other thing is that you know,
there's people that are on Instagram, there are people that

(31:05):
have that are on threads, there's some people that are
on blue Sky, there's some people that are on TikTok.
And you think I can't post to every single thing.
It's like, well, but if you read one post and
then you recycle it to all the different platforms, right,
a lot of times people will only follow you on
one platform, right, So whatever you're posting on Instagram, the

(31:26):
TikTokers haven't seen, so you know, create something that works
for uh, that works for both. So you have this
opportunity to really change your the way that you think
about social media and don't worry about if if people
see the same thing twice, that's okay. Nobody's going to
be mad, and the people that are mad are not
here for your success anyway. And that's really important to remember.

(31:50):
I was talking to an author who's really popular actually
just this weekend, that author Nation, and she was talking
about how hard it is when people say mean things
and how difficult that is. And one of the things
that we have to remember. If you have thousands and
thousands of followers, there is no way that you are
going to make all of them happy. You can't. I

(32:11):
just want to point out that if you get more
than three people trying to go to dinner at the
same time, and we can't seem to pick a restaurant
right right, So there's no way that you're going to
make everybody happy all at once. So we kind of
have to accept that as part of the process. But
if you make yourself happy and you feel good about
the stuff that you're putting out there, that is that

(32:34):
you know, talks about your book, a book that you
should be proud of, a book that is that you
hope is going to connect with readers. Keep your focus there, Yeah,
and don't worry about anything else. Feel free to use
that block button as often as you want.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Oh, I love that.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
I'm going to I think we should name this episode
marketing Mindsets because I feel there's so much grace that
you give to the writers. As you know, again, the
rhetoric is you have to put yourself out there.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
And we do it. I mean, that's why people hire us.
You know, that's why people hire you. They don't can't
do it on their own.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
You can't do it alone. The coaching, the guidance for it.
But you're really humanizing, you know, the fear on the
other side of what experts tell you you have to do.
And so I really appreciate gen the insights that you're
sharing and the perspective because I do feel this is
marketing mindset and you know, a boost for confidence. I

(33:27):
also couldn't agree more with you. You don't need to be
on everything all at once. And what I am taking
from your answer there too is allow your book to
be the.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Catalyst for connection.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
So don't feel that you always have to go back
into your own self and pull this content from you know,
a memory that you had or an interaction that you had.
And please don't just start posting your food pics either.
You know, to really be thoughtful in letting your book
or books, whether they're released or upcoming, do the work

(33:59):
for you. And that's what really brings us together is
making sure our books can get out there individual exactly exactly.

Speaker 4 (34:08):
Although I will say, if your book is one that
highlights food, there's a great there's a great author. There's
a couple of authors out there who she talks about
having essentially fantasy creatures that go to the Great British
Bake Off. So food is a real key element there.

(34:29):
Those are the those are the great pictures to post.
I have another I have a client who who wrote
a book and and and the female main character makes
the best chocolate chip cookies. So it is a key
point in the story about chocolate chip cookies. And so
having pictures with chocolate chip cookies will always make people happy.

(34:50):
In fact, they will probably stop and read find out
why you have chocolate chip cookies on here.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
I'm list yeah for my book club we just finished
The Brier Club a couple months ago, and every chapter
with the new perspective of one of the characters. And
they always started off by retelling their dish that they
made to bring to the prior club dinner. So yes,
if there if it's food related, please by all means.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
But yeah, yeah, put us in the mood. Put us
definitely put us in the mood of uh. And that
and that's the thing, right, sometimes when we talk about
like what what should I be posting on social media?
There's a long standing, long standing rule about your five pillars, right,
and if you come up with five things that you
can post about, well there's five you know, that's posting

(35:35):
five days in a week, and you have a little
bit of variation, but you don't, but you've it's something
you've already thought through in your head so you don't
feel at a loss every single time you have to
go create a post. So that you're sitting there with
a little plus button and thinking, I don't know what
to post today, uh, and you start going through like
what is it that's you know, what's on my mind
or what's on my heart and then realizing you don't

(35:56):
want to be too vulnerable. So what are you know
those kinds of things, and you can if you think
about this ahead of time and figure out what those
five pillars are, it just makes the whole process a
lot faster. And for a lot of authors, I feel
like pillar one is your work in progress, pillar two
is your backlist, and pillar three is is what you've
been reading. So right there, you've got three pillars that

(36:18):
are going to be consistent with what your your readers
might be interested in, consistent with with your author persona,
and supplying people with the type of stuff that they
want to know. And then what are the last two pillars?
Those might be things that that you know speak to you,
like if you again, if you have food in your
in your books and that's a common theme, you know,
maybe it's about food and recipes and those kinds of things.

(36:41):
One author I know consistently post really pretty coffee cups.
I don't know if she's I don't know if she's
pulling these from stock photography places or she just has
a gigantic cabinet full of pretty coffee cups. But she
does a nice job of putting a coffee cup in
front of a pretty window and a post that just says,
I hope you guys have a great day. And that's
the kind of thing where she you know, she's connecting

(37:03):
and she's kind and it's a you know, it's such
a positive little post to be thinking about. I'm thinking
about you guys. I hope you're having a good day.
That's such a positive thing for a lot of people
to see. We're it four. That's already four different things
that you could post right there. And so there's and
so if you have those things at the top of
mind and can pull from them on a regular basis,

(37:25):
like I said, making a pull quote list that includes
not only your poll quotes I mentioned before, but the
tropes or other kinds of like fun things that you
might want to pull out of your books that you
could have in like a sentence or two that you
can put onto an Instagram post or make the Instagram
post into a real add the music, all these little
tiny pieces that can make something create something very quickly.

(37:51):
So you're not putting all of your creative energy into
a social media posts, because that's the other thing that
really is hard for a lot of authors. They've put
so much creativity into that, uh, into that social media,
posting their newsletters, they're they're advertising that type of thing,
which is which is great and it's important. But if
you don't have enough creativity left to be able to

(38:14):
write your books right now, we've created a problem. So
whatever we can do to sort of make that a
more efficient process, the better off you're going to be.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
And that has to be our segue into one of
the questions that I did have for you, because I feel,
you know, it's kind of creativity is innately in all
of us, but there are ways that you can nurture
and boost your creative views and how you look at
things and how you bring that to your work. So
you are a certified creative coach, tell me a little

(38:46):
bit about what you have personally learned from the many
clients that you've worked with, and what you feel creative
coaching offers to authors, to creatives in general, or just
to the every day.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
So creativity coaching is uh is not a term that
a lot of people are familiar with. So so what
that is is that is a certification that is specifically
for working with creative professionals. The coursework focuses not only
on on authors, but on visual artists and performing artists

(39:20):
as well. And and it's looking at the professional side
of what it is that they do, which is creating
something that they have to put out into the world.
It is a very it is a very project based
type of career for people to follow. There's a lot
of unknowns, there's a lot of there's a lot of

(39:43):
am I the on trend person that people would turn
to for their entertainment and so uh, there's uh and
there's a lot of creativity that is involved in each
one of those types of professions and so and so
our training was really about being able to meet people
where they are and figure out how to get to
the next level. So when I think about how how

(40:07):
how authors have to manage their creativity, I really want
them to think about it as a resource. It is.
It is a skill that you can build up, but
it's also a resource that you can run out of.
I say that because, like I said before, when you
are putting a lot of creativity into your into your

(40:29):
social media and into your advertising and all those kinds
of things, when you make the shift to have to
solve creative problems in your book, what are they going
to say? Next, What are they going to do next?
All those kinds of things. You can feel like you
are are just it can feel like writer's block. It
can feel like I don't know what it is that happens,
and that frustration of being tied to this idea of

(40:52):
the word count that you have to put down every
single day. But word count doesn't come if you are,
you know, hitting your head against a wall. And we
have to sort of recognize how to get out of
that mode of being lost into the mode of of
creativity kind of flowing. Now, for some people, we recognize

(41:16):
that you have to you do have to sit down,
put your hands on the keyboard, and that's and if
the words start flowing. So for some people, a great
way to get writing is to start off with with
something that's not your work in progress, right follow up
prompt or something like that, just to kind of work
out the kinks and sort of get things moving in

(41:36):
the same way that you might do a warm up
exercise before you before you run, just to kind of
loosen the loosen up the gears. Another for other folks,
it might be it might be moving your body and
going for a walk right getting out and allowing sort
of the oxygen to sort of flow and move around,
and again it's about sort of getting those gears working.

(41:59):
It's important that we remember the role of sleep in
being able to be creative. There's a lot of folks,
especially when you're under stress, so when things are difficult,
whether in day jobs or in families or in the world,
and all the things that we worry about, and how
that impacts our ability to sleep, and recognizing that if
you're not sleeping well, a lot of other things in
life are much more difficult, including your ability to be creative.

(42:24):
So sort of thinking, doing a little bit of an
internal check about who you are and where you are,
how things are affecting you, what you've done to create
an environment where you can be creative, the boundaries that
you've set with family members that are in people that
are living in your house, as to what it means

(42:45):
when it's writing time, and how and sometimes you know,
sometimes we have to find that time when everybody else
is asleep, or sometimes we find that time when everybody's
out of the house and dedicate that time. But whatever
it is that works for you, and it's again different
for every single person. But being really cautious and taking
care of that time. And when you find yourself in

(43:08):
a place where the creativity isn't flowing right, Like I said,
sometimes it's a matter of getting up and sort of
walking around or put on some music and do a
silly dance in your living room. I have a playlist
called living Room Concerts, and that just sort of like
gets me out of the chair and and and moving

(43:29):
and sort of like knocks the cob webs loosed a
little bit. But it's important for us to remember that
sometimes we have to Sometimes it's a little bit of
a bigger problem that we have to solve, and there's
a there's a lot of different ways that we can
sort of come at come at improving our relationship with
creativity and caring for it in a way that is important.

(43:53):
And one of the best ways for that is having
a community around you that is also creative, whether those
are are or somebody else, but having people that you
can kind of turn to and if you need to vent,
they listen to you, event if you need to brainstorm,
they're your brainstorm partners. If you need somebody to give
you feedback on a chapter that's not working, those are

(44:13):
your people. And who is it that that fills you up,
and sometimes it's being able to turn to those people
and not talk about the writing, not talk about the
business at all. But they are people who make you laugh,
and they make you laugh, especially if you have people
in your life that make you laugh until you cry
and you can't quite catch your breath. That wonderful feeling

(44:34):
of being completely overwhelmed with laughter and joy when you
find those people. Hold on to those people because that
is such a freeing experience and one night of that
can unlock a lot of creativity for you to be
able to move forward. Sometimes laughter isn't what we need,
and sometimes what we have to do is because things

(44:57):
are overwhelming. Crying is really the recipe that we that
we have here. And I think that sometimes we look
at crying as as weakness, or we look at crying
as something that makes other people uncomfortable, something that that
that shows us a shows us a version of ourselves
that we are not proud of. And there's a lot

(45:20):
of baggage that kind of can come along with what
it means to cry. But I encourage people to cry
because it's such a wonderful release in the same way
that laughter can be a good release. And when you overwhelmed,
if you can, if you can take the time, in
whatever safe space or with whatever safe people that you
have in your life, to cry, ugly cry, let it
just let it go and let it all out, because again,

(45:43):
what you might find is that is that you can
release a lot of that negativity and a lot of
that pain. And once it's released, you find that you
are free to do some other things. You are free
to think differently, you're free to problem solve in a
completely different way. And so it's really important to have
those safe people around you, whatever that looks like for you,

(46:05):
or in some cases to be able to cry alone.
I remember being a new mom and needing to be
out of the house because I was I didn't want
the kids to know that I was overwhelmed, and being
outside the house and crying in my car in a
parking lot was the release that I needed at that
time in order to be able to go back and
be a better mom and to be the person that

(46:27):
my kids needed me to be. And that whole process
was uncomfortable, but it was so necessary and it did
so much for me as a person. And we forget
sometimes that we are we are people that feel big
feelings and have big thoughts, and we have to care

(46:49):
for those in some way. You know. We don't get
to just like leave life and go live on a
Greek island for you know, for months at a time
to restore. Although that sounds really fantastic, Yeah, sometimes we
only get thirty minutes to figure out how to get
back into a mode of productivity, and that's all we have.

(47:12):
So we have to make the most of that. And
we have to be honest with ourselves and with the
people around us for what it is that we need,
who we are and what makes us the best version
of ourselves. And sometimes instead of the best, sometimes best
as a little as a word that has too much
baggage associated with it. But if we think about being
the favorite version of ourselves, the favorite version of myself

(47:33):
doesn't worry too much about the cleanliness of the house,
but is more concerned with creating a cozy environment for
the people that I love or creating a safe environment
for my clients. That's the favorite version of myself. So
if we can focus on those things and help us
to remember that everything else will follow. When we feel
good about ourselves, then that creativity will come and we

(47:58):
can solve the problems that we have to solve.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Oh my gosh, Jen, Well, I was going to ask
you what are some of the goals or resolutions for
nurturing creativity in twenty twenty five, but you just said
them all, So I will say we could all rewind
in this part of the episode and go back a
little bit, but I do I really appreciate those those
insights and takeaways and feel that your clients are getting

(48:23):
so much more insight to themselves by working with you,
because I'm hearing creativity is something you can nurture that
it's not. You're just born with the level of creativity
that you are. And oh well, it'll just be tough
if you can you can't refine it. And it comes
with self care. It comes with self boundaries for yourself
and for those others in your relationship, and nurturing, you know,

(48:48):
nurturing the craft, so giving yourself time to practice it
and to really feel it is what it sounds like.
And I just love that for this time of year especially, So.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Jen, thank you so much for being on.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Please share with us a little bit about how to
get in touch with you and what the best methods
are for reaching out people are interested.

Speaker 4 (49:11):
Yeah, so Instagram is probably my favorite, but I do
post on other places as well. I do what I follow,
So if it's on Instagram, it's probably on Facebook. It's
probably on TikTok, it's probably on threads, it's probably on
blue Sky. So so wherever you are happiest is the
place to follow me. You can find me also at

(49:32):
my website and there's a contact form there if you
want to reach out. I do want to say that
for coaching, I offer a free coaching session for all
brand new clients. There's a lot of times when folks
aren't sure what coaching is or whether it's the right
thing for them, So I do a free thirty minute
session for folks to reach out. Let's have a chat.

(49:52):
Let's see where you are and what you're up against
and what your questions are. And if I'm the right
coach for you, that's great, we can continue on. If
I'm not the right coach for you, I have a
whole list of coaching resources that I send out to
people if I'm not the right coach for you, People
that do coaching that is more book oriented, or people
that do coaching that is more prescriptive those kinds of things.

(50:15):
I'm very much I meet you where you are. Let's
talk about about what's going on with you in terms
of your business, in terms of your writing, but also
in terms of your life, and and sort of recognizing
I am not a therapist.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
I mean, I'm but I owe you money right now,
I feel.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
Like but sometimes but sometimes I will say, you know,
maybe maybe this is a conversation for a therapist, but
I'm here to help you with your author business. And
it's very important for us to realize that we can't
separate who we are from who we are as authors,
and that it all happens in the same body, it

(50:54):
all happens in the same brain, and we bring our
whole self to who we are every single day. I
do offer also a six week coaching intensa for authors,
and this is an opportunity to really take some time
to dig into some goals that you have. And what's
interesting is that it's it works really well not only

(51:16):
for authors that have that have big goals, big achievements
that they are trying to pursue, but it also works
really well for authors that are completely overwhelmed. Because for
authors that are overwhelmed that want to continue running their business.
You know, a lot of times we think about what
are the things that we can pull back on, and
how can we realistically pull back here, there, or wherever

(51:39):
so that you have a stronger foundation to build on,
And sometimes those are the conversations we have. Work it
as a program, that is, it's six weeks long. There's
a workshop and a group coaching session every single week.
They are all recorded, so if you can't attend live,
there's that. It also includes two hours of individual coaching
so that we can chat about exactly where you are

(52:00):
and what you can do to work on your business.
There's also a networking opportunity to meet up with other
authors that are at various stages of their career. I've
had folks that are debut authors and folks that have
you know, twenty plus books out out in the world
be able to take this course and feel like they
have gotten and been able to work on their business

(52:22):
and have a meaningful experience, which was meant the world
to me. You know, you put together, you put together
some coursework, you put together some content, and you hope
that people are going to enjoy it. But to know
that how big of an impact it has on folks
is really important. It's also not genre specific. Well, my background,
like I said, is working with a lot of romance authors.
I've had thrillers and mysteries and children's book poets take

(52:48):
this course and be able to build on their author
business as well. So something I'm really really proud.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Of and you should be.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Jen. No wonder you've been doing it for as long
as you have, so please go check her out and Jen,
thank you so much for your time today. No, it's
been a busy couple months for you, lots of conferences,
but we're heading into the new year with some more
perspective now on creativity.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
So much, and.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Please check out our website, Smith Publicity pot com, sign
up for our newsletter, and check out other podcast episodes,
and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Smith
Publicity All Things Book Marketing podcast. To reach us and
learn about our many services, visit Smith Publicity dot com
or send us an email to info at Smith Publicity
dot com.

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